A Hong Kong reporter detained in China since April may be formally charged with spying this week and could be expelled after being convicted, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Chinese authorities are expected to charge Ching Cheong (程翔), a Hong Kong-based chief China correspondent for Singapore's the Straits Times newspaper, today, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified sources.
The journalist was likely to be convicted and sentenced to a jail term or expelled from China, it said.
Ching's wife Mary Lau told the newspaper it was "quite believable" that he would be prosecuted and then expelled.
"Some Hong Kong officials, who are my personal friends, told me recently they heard that Beijing was deliberating different options to handle my husband's case," she was quoted as saying.
"There are various options on the table. I believe that charging my husband and then expelling him from the mainland is one of the options being considered," she said.
Lau said lawyers representing the Straits Times had also told her that expulsion from China was a likely scenario for her husband.
Ching, 55, was arrested in April but the Chinese authorities waited until May to announce he was being held on espionage charges.
They said he had admitted to spying for "overseas organs" in return for money. He has been held under house arrest.
Lau has said she believed his arrest was connected to his attempts to acquire the manuscript of a publication about the late Chinese Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽). Zhao, who died in January, was purged and kept under house arrest for the last 16 years of his life for opposing the June 4, 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Ching's arrest has caused international condemnation. About 500,000 journalists from more than 100 countries last month signed a petition calling on China to treat him fairly.
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